


Anything But Circumstance

by Crave



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Genre: Action, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Space, Humor, IN SPACE!, Identity Porn, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Nightmares, Original Character(s), Panic Attacks, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Stucky Big Bang 2017, so much sass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-16 16:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11832900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crave/pseuds/Crave
Summary: “You are talking to me,” the voice said.“And who are you?”There was a pause. “It is probably best if I show you,” the voice said.One of the walls, the one Steve had been inspecting, began to slide up and up into the ceiling. Steve dashed forward, only to collide with the solid sheet of glass behind the wall. The glass didn’t break, even when Steve pounded it with his fists.“No need to get hysterical,” the voice said. “Why not step back and admire the view?”





	1. Chapter 1

_“History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war.”_

— Joseph Heller, Catch 22

 

There was total darkness, but only for as long as it took for Steve’s eyes to adjust. Then the lights came on, and Steve’s hands came up to cover his eyes.

 

“Now now,” said a voice, “you do not want to miss my grand entrance, do you?”

 

Steve didn’t say anything. The voice wasn’t coming from anywhere in particular that Steve could see, but there must have been a radio somewhere because the room was empty.

 

It was emptier than any room Steve had ever seen before. With its white walls and white ceiling it reminded Steve of one of the hospitals Steve had stayed in as a child. This room had none of that hospital smell, though. Even to Steve’s nose, the room smelled of nothing at all. And there were no sounds, anywhere, so the walls had to be pretty thick. Maybe he was in solitary?

 

“I will introduce myself,” the voice said. The voice had no intonation. No inflection. “I am the Abominator class ship _See, I Told You I Was Ill_. And you must be Mister Rogers.”

 

The room was completely smooth. It had no windows and no doors, but if he was on board a ship that made a kind of sense. Maybe he was on a submarine? They must have pulled him out of the ocean and welded the door shut to keep him in. It was strange, though, not to be able to hear an engine or even the buzz of the lights.

 

“Who’s the Captain?” Steve asked. “Who am I talking to?”

 

“You are talking to me,” the voice said.

 

“And who are you?”

 

Steve began walking around the room and checking the perimeter. If they’d welded the door shut, there must be marks somewhere and if Steve could find where the door used to be, he’d know where to start hitting.

 

“I am the ship,” the voice said.

 

“Is this a submarine? Who is your commanding officer?” Steve asked. Steve had never been in a submarine before, maybe that explained how quiet everything was.

 

There was a pause. “It is probably best if I show you,” the voice said. 

 

One of the walls, the one Steve had been inspecting, began to slide up and up into the ceiling. Steve dashed forward, only to collide with the solid sheet of glass behind the wall. The glass didn’t break, even when Steve pounded it with his fists.

 

“No need to get hysterical,” the voice said. “Why not step back and admire the view?”

 

But what Steve was seeing made no sense. It was like one of those scenes from Bucky’s old pulp novels. There was the pitch black sky, teeming with stars. Dead in the centre was this huge, spinning disk getting closer and closer. Steve could see flying saucers whizzing around it.

 

“We will be docking in around two hours,” said the voice. The ship’s voice. Was he being talked at by a flying saucer?

 

“What did you say your name was?” Steve asked, watching the disk get closer and closer.

 

“ _See, I Told You I Was Ill_.”

 

“What kind of a name is that?”

 

“My name.”

 

“Who called you that?”

 

“I named myself. All ships pick their own names.”

 

“Where am I?”

 

“Good question, Padawan.”

 

“Pada _what_?”

 

“We have two hours remaining. I will show you. Consider it a crash course.”

 

The screen flickered, the flying saucers vanished and a movie began to play. Steve looked around but he couldn’t tell where the projector was coming from.

 

That was how Steve spent his first two hours in the future: watching _Star Wars_.

*

The future was strange, that was for sure. There were a few human-looking people, all in various states of undress. But on the chairs, or sprawled out on sofas, or spread-eagled on the floor, were the aliens. There were aliens that looked like tricked-out versions of the things Steve had seen in magazines: tigers, or elephants, or turtles only they glowed pink or were covered in spines.

Then there were the aliens that looked like nothing else, or that looked like something that could never have been alive but was still walking. What looked like a pile of rocks was talking somehow to a snake-like creature that was covered in silky fur. It made Steve very glad to have seen Star Wars, even if he had watched it in total confusion, taking in none of the plot and marvelling at the incredible details of the space ships. That was what they were called, apparently, not saucers.

 

Amongst them, floating or wheeling, were machines. They didn’t seem to have screws, or joints of any kind. And they were speaking — some of them in the same blank voice the ship used, and some in more natural voices. The ones that spoke like people were more unsettling, Steve thought, like talking animals.

 

Steve had spent the war as a celebrity: he was used to people staring at him, but here none of the aliens were staring at Steve. They stared at the ship instead. When they’d arrived at the space station, which was what this place was called, the ship had shown Steve its avatar. The ship had rolled away another of its walls to reveal another room. In the room was a what looked like a person. It was floating in some kind of tank, fully clothed and with wires all over its head.

 

“This is my person suit,” the ship had said. “It allows me to walk around.”

 

The ship’s avatar wore a kind of mask, and armour, both in a colour so black it made the avatar’s body seem flat and featureless. The avatar had an arm made of some kind of metal Steve had never seen before that made noises and sometimes blue, glowing numbers would appear all over it.

 

Steve wasn’t quite sure how the avatar and the ship could be the same person, when the ship was staying behind and the avatar was walking around, but it talked like the ship. It had the same flat, strange voice that some of the robots had. As the avatar/ship passed through the room, everything around it seemed to clear out of the way.

 

That didn’t surprise Steve. The avatar was scary-looking. It prowled more than it walked. Apart from its eyes – which were a kind of flat, dull blue, like chips of paint – the mask covered up its face completely. It looked, from some angles, as if it didn’t have a face at all.

 

Steve’s stomach growled – apparently loud enough for the avatar to hear – and it guided him through the parting crowd of aliens and people and machines and over to the bar. It ordered something clear and sludge-like. The drink came on tap, like a beer, and was served by a bright green alien.

 

Steve stared at it for a moment, before drinking whatever it was the ship had given him. If it was poison, he figured, his body would filter it out. It didn’t taste like poison. In fact, it tasted delicious and oddly filling. It had a vaguely gelatine-like texture. Like a glass of liquid aspic, only not as disgusting as that sounded.

 

It was the most satisfying thing Steve had ever put in his belly.

 

“Can I have another?” he asked the ship.

 

It was the first question he’d asked since _Star Wars_ started. Then he’d had too many questions – so many that picking just one seemed impossible. What year was it? Was he in the future or just in outer space? What happened to the bomb? Was he dead?

 

Over the edge of the mask the ship’s eyebrows rose and the glowing numbers on its arm flashed just once. It looked, for a moment, surprised.

 

It ordered another.

 

Steve drained the whole thing and took a moment to enjoy the feeling of being full. Between being too sick to keep anything down, too poor to afford much to eat anyway, and rationing, Steve didn’t think he’d filled his belly all the way full more than a handful of times, and not at all since the serum. After the serum that hollow, achy feeling in his stomach had grown more insistent and harder to ignore like a clock ticking in an empty room.

 

“What are we doing here?” Steve asked.

 

“We are looking for a guy,” said the avatar.

 

“Do you need me?”

 

“Not for this, but you will make a good bargaining chip if things do not pan out.”

 

“I’m not a bargaining chip.”

 

“You are practically an antique!”

 

“Is that why you brought me here?”

 

“Look, we will meet with the guy. If things go well, we will get some answers. You will find out where he got you from and I will find out if he has kept up the other half of his deal.”

 

“And what was that?”

 

“Well that is for me to know and you to find out, is it not?”

 

Steve didn’t answer. He wanted to get away from this creepy thing but he wanted answers even more. And anyway, where would he go? He didn’t have any money, he had no idea where he was, or when. If Steve was dead, maybe the ship was some kind of demon here to dish out his punishment. If that was the case, it seemed pointless to run away.

 

The “guy” they were there to meet was a robot. A bright red robot with a glowing metal disc over its chest – where its heart would have been. It sounded like a person — a real asshole of a person, but still. Steve thought the robot was a prick and he was having trouble keeping that opinion to himself.

 

“Captain America?” the robot said. “Still, you are pretty spry, for an older fellow.”

 

“What?” Steve asked.

 

“I suppose you might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a computer programme,” the Robot said. “You’ll want to have heard of me. I’m STARK.”

 

“You said you found him on their databank?” the avatar asked, before Steve could ask about the name. Stark? That had to be a joke. What kind of hell was this?

 

“Yeah, I was poking around a little. Saw some files that looked… interesting,” STARK said, “or rather, that looked like what you’d paid me to go after. How did you know he’d be there?”

 

“I had a source,” the avatar said.

 

“A source you’re keeping hush-hush?” STARK said.

 

“In a manner of speaking.”

 

“Well, I know to back off when a MIND gets cryptic.”

 

“You know what to do if you need more information,” the avatar said.

 

“No thanks, not to offend or anything but I’d rather set my processor on fire than work with Special Circumstances.”

 

“None taken, but our offer still stands. We would be happy to have you.” The avatar paused. “Well, not happy, exactly.”

 

“I’d like more info,” Steve said. STARK and the ship’s avatar turned to him abruptly, as if they’d forgotten he was there. “I don’t know what Special Circumstances are but if they could tell me what the hell is going on that would be great.”

 

“They really kept you in the dark, huh?” STARK says.

 

“Who did?” Steve asked.

 

“HYDRA Corp.” STARK turned to the avatar “You’re not taking very good care of my gift.”

 

“I showed him _Star Wars_ ,” the avatar said. And if it was possible to sound defensive without having any kind of tone of voice, the ship’s avatar was pulling it off.

 

“I retract that statement.”

 

“HYDRA?!” Steve’s head felt like it was full of bees. _Of course they’re here. This is hell_.

 

“After the Second World War HYDRA branched out into tech,” said STARK. “So did I. Well, my founder did. But HYDRA wouldn’t join the Culture when everyone else did. Instead they’re going around screwing with all the baby civilisations that don’t know any better. Pissing off Special Circumstances even more than I do, which takes effort.”

 

“What’s the Culture?” Steve asked, almost in spite of himself. None of the other answers today had made any sense.

 

“Uh,” STARK turned to the avatar. “How do you guys describe this to the lower level civs?”

 

With supreme effort, Steve managed to avoid punching STARK in the face.

 

“It is an interconnected group of civilisations from multiple galaxies,” the avatar said. “The Culture encourages freedom for all species and all forms of life, including technological life. Resources and ideas are freely given and shared.” The way the avatar said it made Steve think it must have said the same lines multiple times.

 

Steve concluded his brain had constructed some kind of outer space communist utopia, only with more asshole androids… and HYDRA. Maybe Steve was in a coma, rather than hell? He pinched his arm just in case. No luck.

 

“What year is this?” Steve asked.

 

“2967 C.E,” STARK said. “Which means you’ve been on ice or online for,” STARK pretended to think about it, “oh, about a thousand years. From what I could get out of the program, HYDRA have been storing you on a database since around 2050.”

 

“Storing?”

 

The ship and the android shared a look. “It is the future,” the avatar said. “We can do a lot of things. And one of those things is storing brains in machines. It looks like HYDRA made a copy of your brain, probably for nefarious purposes, and kept it around. STARK found the copy and sent it to me, and I used it to make a brand new you.”

 

“What happened to the original?” Steve asked.

 

“You’re the only copy HYDRA had that I could find,” STARK said. “It doesn’t look like they defrosted you. You probably wouldn’t have survived anyway.”

 

“At least there’s not two of me wondering around,” Steve said.

 

“That’s the spirit,” STARK said, gripping Steve’s shoulder in fake sympathy. “Anyway I deleted their copy.”

 

So he was dead, in some sense at least. Not that it seemed to mean much in the future.

 

Steve needed to not be looking at either of them for a while. He made his excuses and went to find a bathroom. There were a lot more bathroom options than there had been in 1945 with a lot of symbols on the doors. The one Steve settled on had a mirror though. Steve studied his own face in it: he looked the same as he did before he went into the ice. Somehow the ship had managed to replicate the serum. Or maybe it was the drug glands the ship had talked about? Maybe he was on drugs right now. Maybe he was in a hospital and they’d given him something? Although the longer he stayed here the more he was starting to think this might be real. He’d been out of his mind before with fever and it hadn’t felt anything like this.

 

Could this really be the future? And he was in some kind of outer space bar talking to with a flying saucer and a robot. He’d seen space ships and flying saucers in _Star Wars_ , and these looked close enough, he guessed. Only smoother, as if they’d been made out of one smooth piece of metal. It seemed like STARK, at least, was willing to answer Steve’s questions, even if he was more annoying than C-3PO.

 

Steve pissed in the closest thing to a urinal, looked around for a sink and couldn’t find one. He held his hands under some device that briefly made his hands vibrate and he guessed that cleaned them somehow. He hoped he hadn’t stuck his hands in some kind of elaborate vibrating alien toilet.

 

Back in the bar, STARK and the ship were talking. Most of the bar’s patrons seemed to be either ignoring the pair or keeping a wide berth. But as he headed back towards them Steve spotted an alien looking a little too interested, talking into their hands.

 

“There’s an alien over there who keeps staring at you,” Steve said, gesturing in the direction he’d just come.

 

“I am pretty impressive,” STARK said, but he was frowning.

 

The avatar got a strange look in its eyes. It tapped STARK’s shoulder, just once, and broke into a sprint. Steve glanced over to watch as the avatar leapt onto the alien, pinning them between its thighs. The avatar tore away whatever device the alien had been talking to and crushed it in its mechanical hand. The whole thing was over in less than two seconds.

 

“Looks like you’re not just a pretty face,” STARK said to Steve.

 

“Is the alien with HYDRA?” Steve asked.

 

“I honestly have no idea. But the fewer people know about this meeting the better; I’d really rather not have it out there that I’ve been working with Special Circumstances.”

 

“Is that what the ship is? Special Circumstances?”

 

“Yeah. They’re shady as hell but they get the job done. Nobody knows what they want, nobody knows who they answer to, and they’re all a bunch of smug, self-satisfied assholes. But I’d take their particular brand of insanity any day over HYDRA.”

 

“I have an honest question,” Steve said. The ship was leaning over the alien, probably interrogating them.

 

“Can’t guarantee an honest answer,” STARK said.

 

“Should I stick with this ship, or should I get out of here?”

 

“If HYDRA is after you, the _See, I Told You I Was Ill_ is probably the only thing that can keep you safe.”

 

“And if I’m not interested in safety?”

 

The avatar was running its metal hand over the alien’s face in a way that promised something almost unimaginably sinister.

 

“Then you’re probably interested in answers,” STARK said. “I know how you got here, but I’ve got no idea why, or what that Mind even needs you for, or why it built you a brand new body in the first place. But whatever its plans are for you, they can’t be worse than the ones HYDRA had.”

 

Steve couldn’t think of anything to say to that. The avatar pulled out something from its pocket and it must have been a gun because he pressed it to the alien’s head and they stopped moving.

 

The avatar came back over to them, holding the crumpled device it had taken. The alien was lying on the floor of the bar. None of the bar’s patrons were looking at the body but some of them were heading for the doors.

 

“They will be following us,” the ship said. “Think you can run interference?” it asked STARK.

 

“Can do,” STARK replied, his hands starting to glow as he lifted himself into the air.

 

“Catch you later,” STARK called over his shoulder.

 

Without much of an alternative, Steve followed the avatar out of the bar.

 

The hangar where the ships were stored was mind-boggling. It seemed impossible that a space this big could be indoors. Still, they found the _See, I Told You I Was Ill_ , and the avatar pressed a panel with its metal arm. A door slid open and Steve followed the avatar through it.

 

After the excitement and colour of the bar, it was surreal to be back inside this sterile space. Once the avatar had climbed back into its tank, taping the wires back onto its head, and the walls had closed around it, Steve was alone again.

 

Well, not quite alone.

 

“We are getting the hell out of here,” the ship said, “that means you need a new suit.”

 

“A suit?”

 

“It is going to be a bumpy ride, you need some padding. Open that drawer,” the ship said, and a light flicked on near the floor. Steve pulled out a long, flat tray just an inch or so above the ground.

 

Inside was a kind of jelly-like substance.

 

“Stand in that for a second,” the ship said

 

Steve climbed awkwardly onto the tray.

 

“Okay, take a deep breath,” the ship said.

 

Steve did as he was told, and he felt the goo begin to climb up his legs and torso, eventually flowing over his face.

 

Steve had a brief moment of panic as it covered his mouth and nose.

 

“Breathe out,” the ship said.

 

It went against all his instincts but Steve managed to release his breath. The seal around his mouth broke and Steve felt the suit moving over him like a second skin, thinner over his fingers and almost non-existent over his eyes and ears.

 

“It is just until we get somewhere a little safer,” the ship said. “Now that we have protected your fragile human skeleton, let us get this show on the road.”

 

With a strange lurch that seemed to want to force all Steve’s internal organs out of his body the ship was moving.

 

On the display screen Steve could see only the specks of stars slipping past at high speed. Nothing seemed real, and Steve gave himself over to his final theory: that he’d gone mad. He’d seen veterans wondering around Brooklyn as a boy, talking to people who weren’t there, living in some kind of other world. He wondered where he really was, what other people thought of him wondering around talking to an invisible flying saucer and a robot version of Stark.

 

When he turned his attention back to the screen it showed two shapes heading towards them.

 

“HYDRA?” Steve asked.

 

“Give the man a medal. Well, another medal, anyway. I am sure they gave you plenty when you were alive.”

 

“Can we outrun them?”

 

“No,” the ship said. “Well, yes, but why outrun them when we can kill them, this is what I would like to know.”

 

There was another stomach-wrenching lurch and through the glass screen Steve could see two bright lights, missiles maybe, were streaking away from them and towards the enemy ships. Steve wondered if this was how air support had felt – this sense of detachment. There were people in those ships, Steve knew that intellectually, but seeing them explode into fizzing points of light turned his stomach less than using his fists as Captain America. Was he still Captain America? Did America still exist?

 

“Is that all of them?” Steve asked.

 

“Yes, I mean, if it was not all of them we would have noticed by now. I had to slow that one down for you. Biological eyes are not really equipped to handle things happening that fast.”

 

“So , the battle is over?”

 

“Oh yes, it has been over for approximately fifteen point two seconds.”

 

“And that’s approximate?”

 

Steve wasn’t even sure why the ship had bothered showing him in the first place. To show off? To intimidate him?

 

“I can get a lot more accurate than that.”

 

“That must be real swell.” 

 

The ship laughed. It was easily one of the top ten creepiest things Steve had ever heard.

 

“So where are we going now?”

 

“We are going to the Shield nebula.”

 

“What’re we going to do there?”

 

“Well, that is for me to know and you to find out.”


	2. Chapter 2

“We are going to need to make a stop,” the ship said, waking Steve up from a surprisingly good nap.

 

“Oh?”

 

“We will need someone to help us get in.”

 

“To the… something nebula?” Steve was still pretty groggy.

 

“Shield nebula. It is something of a federation. It is also the last neutral nebula.”

 

Steve found it difficult to talk to something without a face. Addressing his words to a white room made Steve feel like a mental patient.

 

“Neutral in what?” Steve asked. He decided to stare out of the viewing screen.

 

“Special Circumstances and HYDRA are having something of a… disagreement.”

 

“This the same disagreement that got us shot at earlier?”

 

“Some people would say so. The official line is that I have gone rogue and that I am out to cause trouble.” The ship sounded smug about it. Or, as smug as something without any inflection could sound.

 

“But you haven’t?”

 

“Oh no, I absolutely have… it is just that I am doing all of this because I was asked to. And because the disagreement is reaching a somewhat precarious stage.”

 

“You mean you don’t think you’ll win it.”

 

“Yes, I suppose that is what I mean.”

 

“But someone will help us get in?”

 

“She might.”

 

“Sounds a little risky.” Steve wondered what kind of person would voluntarily spend time with a space ship, especially one that behaved the way this one did. Steve hoped this woman, whoever she was, knew what she was doing because Steve certainly didn’t.

 

“It is riskier if we just fly in and start shooting up the place, trust me.”

 

“You tried that?”

 

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

 

“Why do you use so many earth phrases?” Steve asked. It was something he’d been thinking about for a while.

 

“I do not.”

 

“You don’t?”

 

“No that is just the fish in your ear.”

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“You have a translator chip in your brain.”

 

“You didn’t think to ask before you put something in my brain?”

 

“Would you have preferred to learn Marain? Because that was the only other option. The number of people who still speak any earth languages, let alone English, must be in the single digits. And Marain is not easy to learn; it is not as if everyone speaks it.”

 

“So you put something in my brain instead?” Steve’s hands immediately leapt to his head and he felt like an idiot.

 

“Everyone has one. And I was not going to make you totally helpless. Suck it up, big guy.”

 

It was as if he’d just been told he had tape worm. And that he should be grateful for it.

 

“Are you sure you aren’t just using earth sayings?” Steve asked.

 

“I know enough English to guess what the translation will be. It is close enough.”

 

“I still don’t like the idea of you putting weird stuff in my body.”

 

The ship laughed its creepy laugh. Steve blushed, despite his best efforts not to.

 

“I had to make sure you could survive. And while the serum was in your DNA and I was able to replicate it, I did not think it would be wise to create a body that was unable to communicate with others or control its own impulses.”

 

“So you drugged me?”

 

“Of course I did. Or you drugged yourself, I suppose. Technically.”

 

“I want all this stuff out of me right now.”

 

“Most people would agree that not to have done it would have been crueller.”

 

“Well I’m not most people.”

 

The ship continued on as if Steve hadn’t said anything. “Almost anyone would agree that not allowing someone to control their pain is cruelty. How else do you think you are coping with all of this right now? You think without my help you could handle being thrown into the future?”

 

“I do.”

 

“Well maybe you will have the chance to work all that out when we are not officially wanted criminals.”

 

“Yeah, fuck you too, pal. How long until we meet up with your contact?”

 

“Four point five hours.”

 

“I’m gonna sleep till then. Wake me up when I can talk to someone else.”

 

“Will do, champ.”

 

Steve took a nap, lying on the bare floor in the sterile room. It wasn’t the worst place he’d slept, that was for sure.

 

When he awoke it was because the ship’s avatar was patting him on the shoulder. Its flat eyes looked almost concerned, but that couldn’t have been right.

 

Steve sat up.

 

“So who are we meeting?” Steve asked.

 

“A Shield agent,” the avatar said. Its voice was masculine but accentless.

 

“Why would she help you?”

 

“She does not think she is helping us. She thinks she is spying on us.”

 

“And is she?”

 

“Oh probably. She reports everything back to the _I've Elected to Ignore It_.”

 

“Is that a ship like you?”

 

“It is a ship, but it is not like me.” Steve hoped the other ship was less obviously unhinged.

 

“Will HYDRA find out what we’re doing?”

 

“There is always a chance. But our contact is high on the totem pole, her only supervisor is the ship, so she will be talking to fewer HYDRA spies about us before she talks to him.”

 

“Well… good luck with that. What’s her name?”

 

“Widow.”

 

“What kind of name is that?”

 

“Not her real one.”

 

“I guess if we did know her name she wouldn’t be a very good spy.”

 

“Give the kid a dollar.”

 

Steve hoped that Widow, whoever she was, would be less annoying than everyone else in the future.

 

The avatar started pressing at points on the wall and pulling out devices. It tucked them into its boots, its belt, and even slotted some into special slots on its mechanical arm. Steve guessed they must be weapons.

 

The place they docked was nothing like the massive space port at the bar. It was more like a patch of ground with slightly fewer rocks

 

Outside was nothing but red dust and dry, crumbling earth. Steve was sweating profusely as soon as they stepped outside.

 

Steve followed the avatar towards the nearest outcrop of rocks. Only they weren’t rocks, they were strange, solid-looking huts moulded from stone. And on the floor of one of the huts was a hole cut into the floor. After Steve and the avatar had climbed through the hole they found themselves in what looked like someone’s house. It had chairs and a table and a fold-down bed.

 

Sitting on one of the chairs, facing the door, holding some kind of flat, glowing rectangle was an alien.

 

“Widow,” the ship said.

 

“Winter,” the alien replied.

 

“I am afraid he is not available right now, so you will have to deal with me instead,” the ship said.

 

“I trust him,” Widow said, “I don’t trust you. I don’t know you.”

 

“What’s going on?” Steve said, “Is something wrong? Who’s Winter?”

 

“The avatar,” Widow said, “he used to be a human.”

 

“A human?”

 

“A soldier, in fact. We worked for the same side.”

 

“He does not work for them anymore,” the avatar said.

 

“Neither do I,” said Widow.

 

Something in the avatar’s blank face seemed pleased.

 

“I was hoping you might want a chance to get back at our former employer,” said the avatar.

 

“You want revenge?” Widow asked.

 

“I want justice.”

 

“I’m still not sure what you two are talking about,” Steve interrupted them again.

 

“HYDRA,” Widow said, “we’re ex-hydra.”

 

“You know they tried to kill everyone with space weapons, right?” Steve said.

 

“Our work was… involuntary,” the avatar said.

 

“Oh,” Steve said.

 

“And we were lucky to get out alive,” Widow said. “You’re not powerful enough to take them down.”

 

“We are not taking them down,” the avatar said. Steve’s mind boggled. There was a person in there? Could he hear what Steve and Widow were saying? “We are just… causing trouble.”

 

“You have a vendetta, I get it. But this isn’t the way to go about it. That’s why I’ve been working with Shield,” said Widow.

 

“Who are housing HYDRA servers.”

 

“They’re not HYDRA’s servers, they belong to low level civs.”

 

“They are HYDRA, I know it.”

 

“You got any proof?”

 

“None that you would believe.”

 

“Then there’s nothing I can do.”

 

“Aren’t you a spy?” Steve asked. It was out of his mouth before he could think about it.

 

“I’m not going to answer that,” Widow said.

 

“Well this is a tip,” Steve said, “you have a leak. I’m guessing a server is some technology thing and not a waitress. And one of your agents is hiding them in your, uh, nebula. Instead of ignoring us, you should let us stop them. If we’re lying, you’re right and you can be as smug as you want. If we’re telling the truth, you should help us.”

 

Widow looked at Steve for a minute. She had four large, green eyes. Her hair was made of long red threads, her legs were made of metal, her body was covered in that same absolute matte black that the avatar wore.

 

“The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time,” Widow said at last.

 

“But you trust the guy the avatar used to be.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Ship, can you prove that the avatar gave permission for this?” Steve asked.

 

“Sure. I can let you speak to him, if you would like,” said the Ship.

 

Widow looked at Steve for a minute. It was a look Steve couldn’t read. Almost pitying.

 

“No need,” Widow said. “The man I knew was exactly the kind of guy to pull a stunt like this. I’ll help you.”


	3. Chapter 3

Steve wondered what kind of person would let a space ship take them over. Would the person inside the avatar speak in that same monotone voice? Would their eyes be just as flat? It seemed impossible. He remembered his sicknesses as a child: the ones that had stuck with him. The kind that made him think he was possessed by a demon with the way they made him cry and beg and, to his great shame, frequently shit himself. He hoped that this Winter person inside the avatar was asleep in there. Of course, he was presumably asleep right then anyway, having climbed back into the tank.

 

The plan for getting into the Nebula, Steve could follow. It involved bribery, impersonation, intimidation, and luck. The kind of plan Steve could get behind. The rest of the plan was more confusing, because it involved a computer. The ship had tried to explain what computers were like in the future. The best Steve could get out of it was that computers did all sorts of things now, instead of just math, and had become a sort of hybrid projector, radio, phone and filing cabinet. The cabinet seemed to be the part that everyone was concerned about. The word “file” had come up plenty of times.

 

“The plan,” the ship said, “is simple enough. I think even you will be able to pull it off.”

 

“Well that’s real generous of you buddy,” Steve said.

 

The ship continued as if it hadn’t heard him.

 

“Widow will pretend to be taking me into custody. You will hide on board. While Widow heads over to the _I've Elected to Ignore It_ , you, Steve, will head out into the main concourse. You will have maybe five hours at most to find a someone who will lead you to their main headquarters. We will give you as many credits as you need to bribe them, but if all else fails you can always try offering oral sex. I have heard that is quite effective.”

 

Steve wouldn’t say that he had _no_ experience in that area; asthma cigarettes didn’t grow on trees after all and sometimes you did what you had to. Still, it had seemed almost like the ship had known that somehow. Something in its voice. He was being paranoid but in his life paranoia had often been the right way to go.

 

“And then I get into the headquarters,” Steve said, “and I find this computer thing and as long as I’m wearing the suit you’ll be able to search through its files and find proof that they are being controlled by HYDRA.”

 

“Good enough,” Widow said.

 

“And if I get caught?”

 

“If you get caught the avatar will come for you,” the ship said.

 

“And take on all of HYDRA?”

 

“If necessary.”

 

“What happens if we prove that it’s HYDRA?”

 

“When we prove that HYDRA own these servers, then Shield might be persuaded to shut them down.”

 

“Not necessarily,” Widow said. “Shield wants to stay neutral on this: they might raise a stink, but the servers bring in a lot of cash.”

 

“You know what is on those servers,” the ship said. Even in its flat monotone the words came out harsher.

 

“I don’t,” Steve said.

 

“No?” Widow said.

 

“HYDRA,” the ship said. But Steve could tell that wasn’t what the ship had meant. It was easier to get a reading from a machine than from Widow. “Let us try the sensible way first and see where it gets us.”

 

“Oh yeah, you’re a real diplomat,” Widow said.

 

They were keeping something from him, but that was no change. After all, people had been keeping things from Steve his whole life. His mom had hidden the fact that she was sick, and hid the fact that she was dying, and for a week the hospital had refused to tell him that she’d died. Bucky hadn’t told him he’d been drafted until the day he left. If there was anything Steve was used to it was secrets.

 

Working with incomplete information was what Steve did. It had been useful in the war, when information had been scarce. And it had helped him adjust to his new body, when Erskine had died and there had been no one to tell him if it would last or not.

 

He’d assumed, before the serum, that people didn’t tell him anything because they thought he might drop down dead if they did. But when he’d stopped being sick all the time it hadn’t made much of a difference.

 

“I’m a little worried that breaking into a facility has become the sensible option,” Steve said. “Most of the times I’ve tried it, people told me it was a damned stupid idea.”

 

“Subtlety has never been my strong point,” the ship said.

 

Widow laughed.

 

“Yeah, you’re a regular bull in a china shop,” she said.

 

The ship made a sound that Steve assumed was disbelieving, though it was hard to say since it was just as much of a monotone as everything else the ship said.

 

“So what will you be doing while I’m schmoozing the guard?” Steve asked.

 

“We are going to convince the _I've Elected to Ignore It_ to take us seriously,” the ship said.

 

“That’s your boss, right?” Steve asked Widow.

 

“We have an agreement,” Widow said. “It’ll probably hear you out at least.”

 

“Can the _I've Elected to Ignore It_ stop HYDRA?” asked Steve.

 

“Only with support from the rest of the Shield nebula,” Widow said. “Even if it believes us, you’ll have to convince more than just one ship to get what you want.”

 

“How long until we get to the nebula?” Steve asked.

 

“Probably another ten hours,” the ship said.

 

“Do you have anywhere for me to sleep?”

 

“I can probably get the avatar out of the tank and let you sleep there. I am told it is very comfortable. There was a fad for that kind of thing back on Earth once.”

 

“No that’s… uh… that’s fine,” Steve said, “I’ll just sleep on the floor again.” The last time he’d been submerged in water had not gone well for him.

 

“I could use a nap too,” Widow said, “why don’t you let me and Steve get a few hours in while you run a diagnostic or something?”

 

“Well, all right,” the ship said. Steve got the impression the ship thought they were being rude, but he was struggling to keep awake. It was still something of a novelty not to be sleeping in a leaking tent or in the middle of winter.

 

Steve and Widow curled up on opposite sides of the small space inside the ship and Steve tried not to think too much as he drifted off.

 

In his dream it was hot, and Bucky was nudging Steve’s shoulder, holding an ice cream in his hand, offering it to Steve. In his dream Bucky was crouching on a high wall that overlooked the ocean, his back was to the sea.

 

In his dream Bucky began to tip backwards. Steve watched, helpless, as Bucky lost his footing and fell, down and down, into the sea below.

 

In his dream Bucky opened his mouth but Steve could hear only hear a high pitched screeching whine like a badly wired microphone. His heart was in his throat. His face ached. In his dream Bucky’s hands slipped under the waves and Steve found himself leaning out over the wall, staring down into the water.

 

Everything hurt. His hands were pinned to a rock through his palms and strange creatures were leaning over him. There was a terrible, oscillating light like sparks from a machine gun and a gigantic roaring sound that was eerie and familiar and as Steve felt something give in his hands he realised it was the sound of the Valkyrie hitting the water.

 

Everything faded out and when it faded back in Bucky was there. He was holding Steve’s face between his hands, cradling it. Bucky was smoothing Steve’s hair back from his face. His mouth was making soft shushing sounds — and it was the same feeling Steve remembered from finishing his rosaries as a child. Absolution.

 

When he awoke his eyes felt swollen in their sockets, his breath was coming in short, hiccupping gasps. The room was dimly lit and across from him Widow’s eyes were open and intent. He could still feel a kind of phantom pain through his palms. He could still feel Bucky’s breath on his face.

 

“I think his drug glands are malfunctioning,” Widow said.

 

“Hey, I’m right here,” Steve said between gasps.

 

“His readings suggest they are fully functional,” the ship said.

 

“Is it possible it’s the serum?” Widow asked. “It was encoded in his DNA after all.”

 

“That seems the most likely explanation. So his body is ignoring the drug glands? That is going to make everything a lot harder.”

 

“It’s definitely a barrier to a good time,” Widow said.

 

“Also basic medical treatment.”

 

“Isn’t the serum supposed to help with that?” Widow asked.

 

“Well sure, the physical aspects. But it is not known to work psychologically,” the ship said.

 

“Still right here,” Steve said. His head was spinning.

 

Widow scooted over to where Steve was, she put her hand on his arm.

 

“You were just dreaming,” she said. “You’re okay now.”

 

“I’m—” Steve coughed on nothing. It felt like an asthma attack.

 

“You feel like you can’t breathe,” Widow said, “but it’s not true. You are breathing. Can you take a slower breath for me?”

 

Steve’s hands and feet were tingling. His body was drenched in sweat. He tried to take a slower breath but his lungs seemed to stutter and he coughed again.

 

“Try again,” Widow said. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.” She began to count to five, the way Bucky had done when Steve was small.

 

By the time he’d got his breathing under control Steve was covered in cold sweat. His mouth was dry. He scrambled to his feet and found the ship’s bathroom. The harsh light inside stung Steve’s eyes as he splashed his face with hot water — running the water hot enough to scald his hands. He did his best to clean up despite his sweat-soaked clothes, watching his hands fade from red to pink again.

 

Through the walls there was a kind of gurgling noise and the sound of wet feet on tiles. It had to be the avatar getting out of its tank. His tank? Steve wasn’t sure. The ship had called it a “human suit” but the human was clearly someone Widow knew. Someone called Winter.

 

The dream had been horrible, but waking up was almost worse. It had been like that in the war. One nightmare following another.

 

“I have some clothing for you,” came the avatar’s voice through the door.

 

Steve opened the door and took a grey, neutral-smelling bundle from the avatar’s arms. What did people wash clothes with in the future? They’d stopped making washing machines in the war, he remembered, and it had been hard to find a laundromat with enough working machines.

 

He dressed himself in the bathroom, feeling more awake, feeling less like shit. He wondered where the ship had got these clothes from. And how he’d come to be wearing his first set. Had he been formed fully-clothed by the ship, or had it bought him some clothes? He tried to imagine the avatar dressing him and flushed.

 

He emerged from the bathroom feeling sheepish but knowing from experience that it would eventually be more embarrassing to stay in the bathroom.

 

“Drink this,” the avatar said, handing him a milkshake. It reminded him of the drink he’d had at the bar: very filling and with that same gelatinous texture. One thing to be said for the future, they sure knew how to get a lot of energy into their food. He could have used something like that in the depression.

 

“We’re approaching Shield,” Widow said, looking out through that big screen at the stars.

 

It was a strange view and the way the stars flicked past reminded Steve of being a child: running his hands through sunbeams and watching the dust motes scatter around in a blustery cloud. But as Steve watched through the screen the stars of the nebula seemed to be moving further apart.

 

Steve had no idea what was going to happen next, but he felt a strange kind of detachment. He should have been glad not to be so panicked anymore, to be breathing normally again, to be wearing clean clothes. But this new numbness was so alien. He wanted to go back to sleep for a while and at the same time he was afraid to sleep and have any more dreams.

 

He’d never had a sleep less satisfying, or a dream so real. He’d had vivid dreams before but nothing like that. It made him wish he could be a child again, so that his mother could be alive and comfort him. He remembered her combing his sweaty hair through with her fingers when he had a fever, singing the Gaelic songs she only used with him when he was sick.

 

“The planet they are storing the HYDRA databases on is called Quinjet,” the ship said.

 

Its avatar wasn’t speaking but it was looking at Steve. Its face was hidden, but its eyes were more lively than Steve had ever seen them. For no reason Steve could tell, the avatar put its hand on Steve’s shoulder. Its hand was warm and it made Steve feel more like his body was connected to the outside world.

 

When the avatar’s hand retreated, Widow glared at it.

 

As if his body was a marionette and someone else was working the strings, Steve felt himself drink his drink, and he felt his mouth move and heard words come out as the ship and Widow resumed their usual banter. Even as he spoke, Steve had no idea what he was saying.

 

As Quinjet came closer, other ships were visible on the monitors, moving alongside them. The ship slowed down enough that Steve could see planets moving around all the various stars.

 

“Steve?” Widow said.

 

Steve opened his mouth but whatever he said didn’t seem to please her.

 

“We need you to be with us for this mission,” Widow said.

 

Steve knew that. He’d never had anything like this happen to him before, although he’d seen it in others. Falsworth had often been kind of strange after a mission, a little punch drunk. Bucky had been good at getting Falsworth to come back from it, always slinging his arm around him and huddling Falsworth away from whatever everyone else was doing, getting him talking.

 

Bucky had been so good with people. Bucky would have known what to do now. If it had been just the two of them, maybe Bucky would have given Steve a kiss. Maybe it would have been the kind of kiss he’d given Steve when the two of them got drunk together and Steve was feeling a little maudlin.

 

God, this was such a bad time to be thinking about that. Maybe this was a punishment for what Steve had done? Suicides went to hell. Everyone knew it. And although Steve’s priest, Father McMullen, had been a kind man, he’d never said otherwise. But if all of this was real then HYDRA was still around, and Steve couldn’t let himself give up without at least trying to stop them.

 

He didn’t see Widow moving in closer and until she pulled Steve into her arms. She was stronger than she looked and she was so solid it was like hugging a coat rack. But even so, Steve’s arms wound around her and his hands grabbed fistfuls of her clothing and he breathed as deep as he could because there was a smell almost like perfume coming from her skin. His eyes stung, his heart thudded, and some of the fuzziness seemed to clear from his head. He clenched his jaw to keep from crying and then he cried anyway because her hand patted against his back and she made a soft noise that was somehow both unnatural-sounding and comforting.

 

It took maybe five minutes for him to stop crying and let go of her. His head ached and his face must have been a mess but he felt more like himself. He scrubbed a hand over his face.

 

Widow sent a look to the avatar. It was a look in which all four of her eyes managed to convey ‘this is how you do physical interactions, you idiot.’ The avatar looked away, which was the first time Steve had ever seen it look in any way unsure. Even when it had been threatening that man in the bar the avatar had seemed unflappable – bored even.

 

It opened its mouth to speak but there was a loud wailing noise. It sounded like an air raid siren and Steve worried he might really be losing it but then Widow stepped up to the viewing screen.

 

“This is Nat’ha Rom’v code: Widow. Requesting permission from the _Easy Does It_ to approach Quinjet. Bringing in the Psychopath Class _See, I Told You I Was Ill_ , as prisoner,” Widow said.

 

The viewing screen became a movie screen again and showed three aliens standing in black uniforms.

 

“This is most unexpected,” one of the aliens said. The alien was covered in a kind of tufty pink fur that sprouted from the neck and sleeves of its uniform.

 

“It was a…” Widow paused meaningfully, “discrete mission. If you’ll report my arrival to the _I’ve Elected to Ignore It_ , I’m certain it will smooth everything over.”

 

“We are contacting it now.”

 

Steve watched the aliens. One of them was not so much an alien as a sort of cloud wearing a uniform that billowed as if caught in a strong wind. Steve wondered why they bothered with the uniform at all, or why any organisation would mandate such a creature wearing a uniform in the first place. It made him feel better about his Captain America uniform.

 

The third alien confused Steve’s brain the most of the three because they seemed to change shape. Steve would have said “changed shape before his eyes” but that wasn’t quite right. Because it was as if the change was both slow and fast. As if the alien was slowly metamorphosing and simultaneously flickering from one form to the next.

 

The silence was uncomfortable as Steve and Widow and the avatar stood off against the aliens. Alien number three definitely had the advantage in the staring contest because they were almost impossible to look at.

 

“It appears you were indeed authorised,” the blue alien said at last.

 

Steve glanced at Widow, who seemed serene and in control.

 

“Our ship is to escort you and the _See, I Told You I Was Ill_ to a secured hangar. All passengers will be held.”

 

“I’m sure they’ll be secure on board,” Widow said.

 

“Nonetheless, it is policy in SHIELD that all unknown passengers of rogue ships be considered prisoners until it can be established that they are not also wanted for criminal activity.”

 

Steve felt all of their eyes on him.

 

“I am the avatar for the _See, I Told You I Was Ill_ ,” the avatar said, breaking the silence.

 

“We are to hold all personnel for up to one rotation. No exceptions,” the blue alien said.

 

“Understood,” Widow said, her voice completely smooth and unworried as if she had been given the time of day rather than an end to their plans.

 

The screen returned to its view of space.

 

“What’ll we do now?” Steve asked.

 

“I can plead your case to the _I’ve Elected to Ignore It_ , in your absence, but without proof he can’t act.”

 

“Why don’t the avatar and I just break out?” Steve asked.

 

“Of a secure facility?” the avatar was dismissive.

 

“Do you have any plans of the building?” Steve asked.

 

On the screen an image of a building appeared and began to rotate, showing the facility from multiple angles. It was very strange to look at but Steve could see the benefit of this kind of picture over regular floor plans.

 

“This is the model we have of it,” the avatar said.

 

“How did you obtain that?” Widow asked. She seemed impressed.

 

“I have contacts,” the avatar said. “It had occurred to me that Steve might get caught. I needed the plans in case he needed to be rescued. But I had planned to break in, not out.”

 

Steve frowned. It seemed no one had any faith in him but maybe he could be useful now. Steve watched as the image of the facility on the screen rotated slowly.

 

“Will we be able to conceal any weapons?” Steve asked.

 

“So long as my arm is still functioning, we have the best weapon there is,” the avatar said.

 

“Pause on that image,” Steve said. He was staring at a particular corner of the diagram. “Is that a sewage tunnel running close to the holding cells?” he asked.

 

Widow whistled.

 

“I don’t want to see what you two look like after that,” she said.

 

“I have run some simulations,” the avatar said, “and you are correct, that is our best option. 1000 years in the future and everyone still has to piss and shit.”

 

“Or the equivalent,” Widow said.

 

“It’s a way out,” Steve said. He tried not to be too proud but he was glad the avatar didn’t think he was a complete idiot.

 

The avatar nudged him a little with its robotic arm. Steve wished, as he had so often, that he didn’t blush so easily. And that his urge to please blue-eyed, dark-haired men was less of an issue in his life.

 

“So the main problem will be getting out of the facility itself,” the avatar said.

 

“We’re forgetting the files,” Steve said. “We’re not going to be inconspicuous after crawling through that tunnel. People will smell us coming long before they see us.”

 

“We need some other way of getting direct contact with the servers,” the avatar said.

 

“Or we could just hack it,” said Widow.

 

“I had to call in a lot of favours just to get that map,” the avatar said. “I have no hope of building anything good enough to get us into those files without an exploit and SHIELD exploits are difficult to get hold of even when you know the right people.”

 

“For you maybe,” Widow said.

 

“You can’t seriously be thinking of spear phishing them?”

 

“Oldest trick in the book.”

 

Steve was hearing a lot of words but the context was all wrong. Still, if he insisted on having everything he didn’t understand explained to him they’d be there forever and he’d never get anything done.

 

“Okay,” Steve said, “you try that.”


	4. Chapter 4

The _See, I Told You I Was Ill_ was escorted onto the surface of Quinjet. Natasha left, in the company of aliens one and two, leaving alien three, the shapeshifter, behind as a guard. Steve was tempted to break out straight away, but took his cue from the avatar and allowed alien three to frog march the two of them into an impossibly tall building. Standing at the base of it, Steve couldn’t even see the sky, just a kind of endless grey monolith.

 

Inside the building was surreal. Muted colours and bland art on the walls. People wore business attire or the alien equivalent. It was disorientating to enter such a huge building, let alone one filled with impossible to imagine creatures. And yet, at the same time, he felt that he was walking into any one of the dull, uninspired office blocks he’d passed by in Brooklyn.

 

None of the alien office workers seemed particularly interested in Steve or the avatar. But, as Steve studied their faces, more and more of them seemed to be exaggeratedly feigning their disinterest. One feminine-looking alien, although Steve had no idea how to judge that on a being with so many limbs, appeared to be drinking a kind of blue liquid through a clear bottle but each time they lowered the bottle the level of the liquid remained exactly the same. A much more human-looking man with bright pink skin was mechanically chewing something whilst maintaining an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with Steve.

 

Steve was glad their escape plan did not involve sneaking back through these guys. The corporate dullness of the offices seemed to transform into something far more sinister. Steve might have been dead, but HYDRA had been alive for a thousand years.

 

Still, neither the ship nor Widow had seemed to think this mission was impossible. The ship was a loose cannon, but Widow he trusted. And her belief in the ship made Steve feel safer about travelling with the avatar.

 

His head felt like it was full of bees, his skin felt tight, his eyes watered a little. The shapeshifting alien escorted Steve and the avatar down a narrow, black corridor and into an elevator. There was no operator and no controls but the elevator moved anyway.

 

Steve found himself wedged into the dimly lit space of the elevator with the avatar on his right and the alien on his left. The alien’s constant change in shape and size meant that the elevator was by turns spacious and cramped. As the alien forced them closer together, Steve was surprised to find that the avatar’s skin was warm and alive through its impossibly matte black clothing.

 

Steve felt the hairs on his arms standing up and a kind of aching, shuddery sensation zipped through his body. It took him a moment to realise it was arousal. It was such a strange thing to be feeling. Steve wondered if his body and brain were just trying to push the limits of what one person could be feeling in a single day. Running the full gamut from “all-consuming grief” to “confused and semi-hard in the presence of an alien.”

 

The shapeshifter expanded and Steve found himself pressed thigh to shoulder against the avatar. He knew he was blushing. There was a person in there, he told himself, who was unaware that Steve was even around. It was, at the very least, voyeuristic to think about the avatar like this. Like watching a stranger sleep.

 

It was the longest elevator ride Steve had ever taken. Empirically, not metaphorically. Although also metaphorically. The longer it lasted the more surprised Steve became at how long it was taking. They had surpassed the most amount of time Steve had ever spent in an elevator almost immediately. Now each passing second grew more surprising as it somehow continued to take place inside of an elevator. Steve had expected the whole elevator experience to be over fairly quickly but it only dragged on and on. After what could have been really any length of time Steve began to feel the beginnings of hysterical laughter creeping up on him.

 

It reminded him of the time Steve had been eating Sunday dinner at Bucky’s house and Bucky’s pa had managed to spill gravy on his shirt without noticing. Bucky’s father was a hard man. He had used his belt on Steve before and even sometimes on the girls. Everyone knew that there’d be trouble if anyone so much as looked at him askance. But Steve, in looking away from Bucky’s old man, had managed to catch Bucky’s eye. And it had been like a train crash. Trying to hold back but unable to stop what was coming. Both looked away. And Steve had managed to sip his water without spilling it but he’d caught Bucky’s eye again just as he was putting down his glass. And that had been it. No amount of pressing his hands over his mouth or biting his lips had been enough to stop the laughter. The two of them had laughed until they were wiping away tears and hiccupping uncontrollably. They’d both earned the belt for it, of course, but it had been probably the funniest thing Steve had ever experienced. The danger only adding to it somehow.

 

And now here he was on this completely impossible and borderline erotic elevator journey, and each moment that it continued was only heightening how impossible it was that any of this could be happening. He was smiling already, which was half the battle lost.

 

When it came it was inevitable. It was like an earthquake or a flash flood. One minute Steve was smiling and the next he was practically bent double. Clutching his stomach. Failing to push the laughter back down. His shoulders shook. He threw his head back and laughed openly, tears on his face. The avatar tried to dig its elbows into Steve’s side. Steve could only laugh harder. Each time it seemed like it would end he would realise that he was still inside the elevator and it would take over again.

 

Steve barely noticed the brief weightless, stomach-rising feeling as the elevator came to a stop. His whole body was weak with laughter and he felt light and helpless as the guard urged Steve and the avatar into a cell.

 

“Laugh while you still can,” the shapeshifter said, “but we know who you both are. Soon, very soon, you’ll be screaming. Hail HYDRA.”

 

Then the shapeshifter locked the doors and headed back for the elevator.

 

At some point between all of the things he’d been feeling, Steve had reached a kind of equilibrium, and the shapeshifter’s last words had finally broken through his laughter. He felt that sense of deep focus he’d been able to reach in combat moving through him.

 

The cell they had found themselves in reminded Steve of the ship: it had smooth, featureless walls and a bare ceiling. There was something like a toilet in one corner. It was surrounded by a metallic panel but it had water in it and a hole of some kind with various attachments. Steve let himself look over the place where they’d come through. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. Seamless. Like the door had never existed at all.

 

It had been a good idea to use the sewage system as a way to escape, Steve thought, because apart from the toilet there was no way for anything to get in or out of the room. It didn’t have a bed or a water fountain or a window. It was unusually spacious, though, around the size of a church hall.

 

“There are cameras,” the avatar said. “We are being watched, and listened to.”

 

It came as a surprise to Steve because there didn’t appear to be any cameras, or really much of anything in the room.

 

“The tiles are,” and here the avatar paused to consider, “they are made of a material that is opaque on one side and transparent on the other.”

 

“Like a two-way mirror?”

 

The avatar’s silence made it seem surprised, somehow, but Steve had been in a cell before. He’d been interviewed, too. It was amazing how much of that had been erased when Steve became Captain America. He wondered if any of it had come out once he died, or if he’d become some kind of saint instead. He remembered the handsome pictures of Saint Sebastian he’d seen in his art classes: the saint himself seeming indifferent to the arrows that pierced the various naked, muscled sections of his torso.

 

Before he’d worked out what his crushes even were, Steve had been sweet on Saint Sebastian. When puberty hit he’d felt some rather unsaintly feelings thinking about him. If Steve had ended up a martyr, he hoped at least someone had got something out of the experience. Although he wasn’t a true martyr, since he’d wanted to die. And also because he was apparently still alive.

 

“So what now?” Steve asked.

 

“We wait for the negotiations between the _See, I Told You I Was Ill_ , Widow, and the _I’ve Elected to Ignore It_.”

 

But as it spoke, the avatar was raising its electronic arm and letting Steve get a good look at the blue numbers and letters on it. For a fraction of a second Steve saw his own name appear next to some other symbols.

 

“And how long will that take?” Steve asked, trying not to let his eyes rest too long on the arm.

 

[I am going to jam the camera and microphone signals, keep talking] said the avatar’s arm.

 

“I am sure it will not take long,” the avatar said. “Widow will sort everything out in no time.”

 

“I don’t want to stay here all day,” Steve said. “I’ve got places to be.”

 

[Waiting for the elevator to go back up] the arm said. Steve tried not to laugh and mostly succeeded.

 

“I am sure it is all a misunderstanding,” the avatar said.

 

A couple of awkward minutes passed.

 

“Signal is jammed,” the avatar said.

 

“Thanks,” Steve said. He headed over to the toilet. “How’re we going to get this panel up?”

 

The avatar grabbed it with its metal arm and wrenched the entire toilet contraption out of the floor. There was water everywhere pretty quickly after that. The avatar began to punch at the floor, widening the space where the water was coming in.

 

“Can I help?” Steve asked.

 

“Yeah, try and pry away some of the flooring around the hole.”

 

Steve began to tug at the flooring, widening the space the avatar had to work with and in the process getting covered in water and other, fouler substances.

 

“How long have we got till they try and get back in?”

 

“They will have noticed the cameras going off immediately. Now they have to organise who should go back down to check on us. I have… something of a reputation, so I think that part will take longer. Then it is just the elevator. All told we have maybe ten minutes.”

 

Steve doubled down on his efforts to pull away more of the flooring. Trying to breathe as little as possible and keep his mouth closed as between the two of them they managed to get at the main sewage pipe.

 

“We are going to have to work our way along whilst fighting them off from behind,” the avatar said.

 

“Sounds like old times,” Steve said.

 

“It will not be easy,” the avatar said. But Steve could hear a smile in its voice.

 

The avatar went first, and Steve followed. Steve grabbed one of the long metal attachments from the toilet and wrapped it around his wrist for protection and a better punch. He tried not to speculate about what the attachment had originally been used for. The stench was god-awful. Alien shit, Steve decided, was worse somehow than the human stuff. The pipe they crawled through was narrow, pressing in on all sides, scraping over Steve’s skin. Steve was especially grateful for the serum; he didn’t want to think about what his original immune system would have made of new and exotic alien diseases.

 

The further they crawled through the pipes the dimmer the lights became until the only glow came from the avatar’s arm. Sound, though, that carried. It wasn’t long until Steve heard voices coming up through the pipes. There was a kind of rasping, thudding noise that built up through the walls and rattled so hard Steve could feel it in his teeth.

 

The avatar kept on moving and Steve followed. They were making the most of their ten minute head start. Steve suspected that he was holding the avatar back. It was efficient, mechanical, like an engine. It never stumbled on its hands and knees, never knocked its elbows hard against the pipes, never had to stop, take deep breaths and try not to vomit.

 

Whatever aliens were following, they were catching up. Steve could hear voices over the rattling noise, and it sounded like an argument. The avatar took multiple turns, often reaching back with its mechanical arm to drag Steve round a sharp corner. Even mired in shit, the avatar had a kind of grace. The faint glow of its arm in the gloom made it seem spectral and unearthly. It reminded Steve of when he and Bucky were children and spent the night with a packet of Wint-O-Green lifesavers, cracking them between their teeth at night and seeing the blue sparks.

 

Steve wondered if Widow was having any luck. If everything would be set up for them if they made it out of this sewer. Steve was used to being the one who made the plans and not so much the one who followed them. But he knew when he was outclassed. There was no chance of him ever coming up with this plan and he was just glad his suggestion of using the sewage system had any merit.

 

The noise behind them was growing louder and stranger. No longer sounding like voices but more like a kind of wet, echoing noise like water hitting a metal bucket. Whatever was behind them moved fast. As the avatar reached for him, Steve felt something alien wrap tight around his ankle, dragging him to a stop. Steve tried to reach back and hit at it with his metal-wrapped fist but it was so cramped that it seemed impossible to get the space. The avatar grabbed hold of Steve’s arm, stopping whatever was behind them from dragging Steve backwards.

 

The avatar and the alien were evenly matched. Or rather, the avatar was unwilling to pull Steve too hard in case Steve’s squishy human body gave way. His ankle and arm both felt like they were seconds away from dislocating. In a fit of frantic desperation Steve began to kick and squirm, twisting away from both the alien and the avatar. The avatar grabbed him again and began to drag him forwards again, Steve kicking blindly at the alien.

 

The avatar kept its flesh arm wrapped around Steve’s shoulders and began to smash its prosthetic against the wall. It made a high, piercing sound that echoed through the dark. Light streamed in as the avatar began to tear the metal walls open. The alien was wrapping itself around Steve’s leg and foot but the avatar was relentless, pulling both Steve and the alien out of the sewer and into a bright, empty corridor.

 

The alien looked, to Steve, like it had been melted. Beige and formless, stretched around his leg like chewing gum. Steve used the metal tubing around his hand to saw through the alien’s strange body and scrambled away.

 

The avatar helped him to his feet and the two of them sped down the corridor. The corridor itself was completely bare and was the exact corporate grey of a new suit. They took a turn at the end of the corridor and headed off down another identical empty corridor, followed by another. And another. The alien was close behind them. Steve tried to keep the turns straight in his head but it was impossible as each corridor seemed more like the last.

 

Steve remembered that impossibly long elevator ride, wondered how far underground he was. If things didn’t go to plan it looked like it might be impossible to escape. Steve wondered if he felt any particular way about that. The ship he wasn’t so sure about, but he didn’t want to let Widow down. The problem, Steve had discovered, was that you didn’t always know what you were planning on doing before you did it. That you could have secrets that crept up on you.

 

You might want to have a wife, and a home, and maybe a dog or two. You might want to have a stable life that you don’t feel ashamed of. But then one day you might be lying on the floor of your dead mother’s apartment with your oldest friend. And you might turn to say something to him. And you might feel as if you had been seeing the outlines of a cruel and joyous thing coming at you your whole life. And you might realise it was here now, and what it meant. And you might see the same unravelling of everthything in your friend’s eyes. And you might kiss him, hard, on the mouth.

 

Or you might be planning to escape from your plane when you’d crashed it. But instead, Steve knew, you might just sit there at the controls. You head strange and buzzing. A calm, terrible certainty settling over you.

 

Steve hoped this mission wouldn’t be like that. And if it was he hoped he could keep it together long enough to so some damage to HYDRA on the way out. It was a kind of purposeless, aimless hope.

 

The alien was gaining on them and the noise it made was wet and gurgling — kind of rasping squelch, like a toilet plunger.

 

Steve and the avatar sprinted at full pace down corridor after corridor. Its arm had given the avatar an advantage in the narrow space of the sewers but in a sprint they were evenly matched. The avatar occasionally checked its arm as if it were a watch. Steve guessed it could understand something in the glowing symbols that covered it.

 

Steve wished he could understand them because he suspected it was some kind of building plan.

 

They turned another corridor and were halfway down before the alien caught up with them. Steve turned just in time to avoid one of its limbs. The avatar raised its gleaming arm aloft. Nothing happened in its eyes as the avatar bent its knees and launched itself at the alien. The avatar sliced through the alien with its metal arm with the same bland disinterest as if it were tying a shoelace or drying dishes.

 

The two halves of the alien separated in the wake of the avatar’s arm but as momentum forced the avatar through the alien’s gelatinous body, the avatar became stuck as the two halves began to re-form, trapping the avatar inside.

 

Without thinking, Steve reached behind him and felt around for the shield. Shit. He swung the metal tube around instead, getting a feel for it.

 

“Grab on!” he called, sprinting forwards and whipping the tube into the alien’s skin where the avatar had vanished through it.

 

The avatar’s flesh hand emerged and gripped onto Steve’s improvised rope as Steve pulled the avatar free.

 

“Any ideas?” Steve asked the avatar.

 

“Kill her,” the avatar said.

 

“Her?”

 

“That’s a bit of an approximation, her species have a few kinds of genders.”

 

“Can she understand us?”

 

“Yes.”

 

The alien had a lot of strange structures that might have been feelers or eyes. Steve twirled the metal tube above his head and sprinted at the alien, striking whatever those things were as hard as he could. The alien reared up, the rest of her feelers pulling in tight and throwing herself blindly at the avatar like a screaming, flailing freight train.

 

Steve leapt onto the alien’s back and felt himself falling into the creature as if he were sinking into mud. The alien was colder inside somehow. Steve managed to crawl up towards the front part of the alien’s body where its feelers had emerged. They must connect to something. He was waist deep and slipping fast into the alien’s bizarre body. He plunged in blindly with his hands and with the metal wrapping. Steve felt something lumpy and strange where the feelers emerged and managed to get both hands around it and pull as hard as he could.

 

The alien bucked around under him like bull and then became motionless and began to fall onto the ground as Steve yanked the thing in his hands out of the alien’s body and threw it away. The extra force caused Steve to become totally engulfed by the alien’s now-lifeless body.

 

Something gripped Steve’s shoulders and he felt himself being pulled out of the alien and onto the floor.

 

“You got her,” the avatar said, patting Steve’s shirt. A shirt which was now covered in shit and improbable alien slime.

 

“Are we going back in the sewer?” Steve asked, hoping the answer would be no.

 

“We are close enough to where we needed to be.”

 

“Really?”

 

“No, but Widow is coming to get us.”

 

“Already?”

 

“She is efficient.”

 

“How did it go with that other ship the … uh… _I’ve Elected to Ignore It_?”

 

“It did not go well.”

 

“Then why is Widow coming to get us?”

 

“Because the _I’ve Elected to Ignore It_ was assassinated.”

 

“How do you assassinate a ship?”

 

“Traditionally, you blow it up.”

 

“So what’s our plan now?”

 

“Find Widow, find the servers, and blow them up.”

 

“Do we have anything to blow them up with?”

 

“Not yet. But what is on those servers cannot be allowed to remain.” The avatar seemed certain of success, but Steve recognised a failed op when he saw one.

 

“Look, I know it’s HYDRA but—”

 

“It is hell.”

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“They can make a simulation,” the avatar said, “that feels real. I think the closest thing you would understand are dreams. The people whose minds are uploaded onto the HYDRA servers are asleep, they are dreaming, and HYDRA makes them dream terrible things. That is what is on those servers. And we are going to destroy them.”

 

“Why would they do that?” It seemed monstrous.

 

“It is a service HYDRA provides. Not everyone is a good person, and some civilisations do not want to share their lives after death with these bad people so they talk to HYDRA. And HYDRA steps in: they take the less desirable minds and put them into a manufactured hell.”

 

“That’s...”

 

“Your people would have done the same thing with Hitler. How could it be enough for him merely to die?”

 

“On earth, they left it to God.”

 

“They would not have done so if they did not have to.”

 

There was a pause. The avatar had a point, Steve supposed. Steve wasn’t naïve enough to believe that people on earth wouldn’t have been glad to put people in hell, rather than in prison.

 

“Did they do that to me? Is that where I was?” Steve said.

 

“Yes.”

 

“I had a nightmare…”

 

“I got rid of most of it but those kinds of memories leave scars,” the avatar said.

 

Steve remembered the incredible realness of the rock and the pain in his hands and strange creatures from his dream. But Bucky had been there, too, feeling just as real. Had Bucky somehow been in that hell? Is that what happened to people like them when they died?

 

“Thanks for getting me out and all. But if I was alive in there, won’t blowing up the servers kill them?”

 

“The original plan was diplomacy. A war has already been fought over this. Our next plan was espionage, but that has proven ineffective. This is the only option we have left. And I think that if you had stayed there you would have preferred to die than to stay. Even a second of it is enough to break a person.”

 

“But you rescued me.”

 

“At this point I can kill them, or I can leave them all. There are trillions of souls trapped on those servers.”

 

“And you’re saying we should kill them all.”

 

“They already died once and you know more than any that there are things worse than dying. What would you do?”

 

“I don’t know,” Steve lied. The dead should stay dead. That’s what he knew.

 

“You will help me,” the avatar said. It wasn’t a question.

 

“Yes.”


	5. Chapter 5

When Widow came for them it was from above. A ceiling panel lifted and she was above them; she looked like she’d just run a mile.

 

“That was quick,” Steve said.

 

“Seems like our spear phishing attack had some success. It got the elevator access codes. No matter how much security you have, in the end there are always stupid people.”

 

“Will the codes work much longer?” Steve asked.

 

“A little while. At the moment, the elevators are too useful to stop them working completely. What’s our plan for getting out?

 

“We are not getting out just yet,” the avatar said, “not until we blow up the servers.”

 

Widow sucked in a breath and then let it out slowly.

 

“If I were to help you,” she said, eventually. “What would you need me to do?”

 

“I would build the bomb,” the avatar said, “and you would plant it.”

 

“I said I’d talk to my boss. They killed him. They killed a ship; this is way above my pay grade and I’m not giving my life for you.”

 

“They killed the _I’ve Elected to Ignore It_ , that tells us everything. It proves what is on those servers is worth killing for. They are after you already. You will be the one with the bomb. You will have the timer. It will not go off until you tell it to. If it kills you, it will be because you let it.”

 

“You’re full of shit.”

 

“I am telling the truth. I have one goal here. Shutting down those servers. I wanted to save the people on them, but if I cannot save them I have to at least set them free.”

 

Widow thought for a minute.

 

“Well,” she said at last, “I’ve come this far.”

 

Building a bomb involved a lot of cleaning supplies. Steve opened what felt like hundreds of empty closets before he found anything that looked useful.

 

There was a tense silence while the avatar began to measure out various substances from the bottles Steve had managed to steal.

 

“From here on out I am outsourcing all my fine motor skills,” the avatar said, after removing what looked to be a very vital group of wires from its own arm.

 

At which point the avatar directed Widow in how to attach everything together. It had Steve unscrew the panels from its arm and showed Widow how to turn them into a timer.

 

Without its smooth, glowing surface, the avatar’s prosthetic looked a lot more like the kinds of machines Steve had seen before, covered in wires and pistons. Steve felt almost as if he were looking at a wound.

 

“What now?” Steve asked.

 

“Widow gets into the control room and sets off the timer,” the avatar said.

 

“And what do we do?”

 

“We get the hell out of here and we make a lot of noise doing it. We need to draw as much fire as possible. We need security as thin as possible around those servers.”

 

“What do you think?” Steve asked Widow.

 

“I think it’s our best shot,” she said, “I’ve been working with the Shield Nebula long enough to tell you that after this breach they’ll move those servers. It would take centuries to find them again.”

 

“You doubt me?” the avatar said.

 

“You’ve got your own agenda,” Steve said, “and she’s got hers. Of the two of those, she seems like she cares the most about getting out of here alive.”

 

“Touché,” the avatar said. “Either way, you are stuck with me now. Widow, give me the elevator codes and a gun. Steve is unarmed.”

 

“ _He’s_ unarmed?” Widow was incredulous, “ _your_ arm is practically hanging off.”

 

“The only weapon Steve has right now came from a toilet,” the avatar said. Steve felt the cold line of the metal piping around his hand tried not to feel self-conscious.

 

He accepted Widow’s gun. It was curved in strange ways and covered in buttons.

 

“That green button is the trigger,” Widow said. “The recoil’s a bitch.”

 

Steve nodded, unhooking his belt and threading the holster through it. Sometimes you needed to fire. Sometimes you needed both hands free.

 

Widow kissed Steve on the cheek.

 

“Good luck,” she said, a faint smirk dancing around her mouth.

 

Steve nodded at her. “You too,” he said, though it didn’t seem like it meant much to her.

 

And then Widow was climbing back through the ceiling and Steve was alone with the avatar again.

 

Steve and the avatar started along the corridor and quickly made into a run. They passed through more of the impossible grey maze of the facility: up corridors, through doors, seeing no one, hearing nothing.

 

It seemed to go on forever before the avatar stopped, mid-way down a corridor.

 

“Get ready,” the avatar said.

 

And that was all the warning Steve got before all hell broke loose.

 

The avatar swung its stripped-down arm at the wall. The sound of the wall cracking open was phenomenal, but louder still was the gunfire.

 

HYDRA’s guns released sharp sparks of light. Everything lit up and the air was hot. Something scorched Steve’s hair and cheeks and then the avatar was pressing Steve down to the ground, helping to extinguish the flames.

 

Steve sprang up and opened fire.

 

Widow had been right, the recoil jarred right up Steve’s arm and into his skull. The headache was instantaneous.

 

The avatar had sprung at their attackers and was bludgeoning them with its robotic arm. The avatar was mechanical and terrifying in its destruction. It seemed almost like a wind-up toy. It was aggressively inhuman and Steve recoiled from it.

 

And then something launched at Steve. Something heavy and metallic. A droid, Steve guessed. He grabbed hold of it and let it pull him forward, clearing a space around them. Steve felt over its smooth , cold surface and found some kind of seam that ran along its side. He dug his nails into that thin gap, widening it, splintering his fingernails. When the panel came away, Steve grabbed a handful of circuitry and pulled it free.

 

The droid crashed to the floor. Steve shot at a fairly human-looking shape in black that was coming towards him and it crumpled to the floor.

 

The avatar whistled, Steve turned, and the avatar pointed down the corridor.

 

“I go left, you go right,” the avatar said.

 

It was a terrible idea.

 

They did it anyway.

 

Steve vaulted over the humanoid corpse as he tore down the corridor. Something, someone, took after him.

 

At the end of the corridor was another identical corridor. Steve ran down it, and down another. His panic at how lost he was getting was matched only by his panic over what was chasing him. He’d caught a glimpse of the alien behind him and he knew it was terrifying. Bright blue, glowing like the avatar’s arm, spiny.

 

Steve’s lungs were screaming and the thing was behind him. He turned. It was like a slug only it was coated in spines.

 

He ran, impossibly, and when he couldn’t run he turned. As the alien threw itself at him, Steve leapt into the air, scrabbling up the alien’s spines to its bright blue eye stalks. He punched them with his metal-wrapped fist and then shot into the rubbery skin between.

 

The alien collapsed and Steve had to use all his strength to stop himself being crushed by its spines.

 

There was a shout and a volley of gunfire and then the avatar had grabbed hold of Steve’s arm and was dragging him down another corridor to an elevator.

 

The avatar punched in a long string of numbers, too many for Steve to keep track. The writing was indecipherable in any case.

 

The elevator button lit up but nothing else happened.

 

“We have to wait for it,” the avatar said.

 

And of course that was when more aliens arrived.

 

Steve and the avatar were a ruthless, efficient team. As another alien appeared the two of them ran forward together with their arms raised. They fought with a kind of mindless grace. Like a cruel dance. Steve swung his metal-wrapped fist at close range and fired blindly at anything that didn’t look like the avatar.

 

The elevator was taking an age.

 

How far down were they? Was it good enough? Would they be close enough to the surface to make it out once the bomb went off?

 

Steve couldn’t think. Could only move. He felt his fist to connect with another humanoid thing that had deep, mottled-purple skin.

 

He shot something with many, many legs and heard it shriek, almost humanly, in pain.

 

Everything was a mess. There was alien blood. Steve’s shirt was shredded.

 

So many aliens had spines, Steve thought, as something that felt and looked like a cross between a toupee and a lizard lashed out at him and lit up the side of Steve’s body with bright, white pain.

 

When the elevator did arrive, it did not want to leave. Each time the avatar began punching in the code, an alien would interrupt, meaning that the avatar would have to start over again.

 

Steve was fighting something indescribable with a texture like rock hard candyfloss and the avatar was half-heartedly fighting a droid.

 

And then there were, briefly, no more aliens left alive and the avatar finished what it was doing with the elevator panel. Steve considered pushing the alien corpses out of the elevator and decided against it. He’d save his energy for something useful. Steve was aggressively not thinking about how all of the aliens were people, really, that they were as smart as he was.

 

They were moving. Going up.

 

“What now?” Steve asked.

 

“We must try to get as many floors up as we can before they stop all the elevators, if we want to have any chance of escaping,” the avatar said.

 

“We need to be close enough to those servers to draw away their security detail, and far enough away not to get incinerated,” Steve said. “Is that the goal?”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“How many floors does this place have?”

 

“Roughly five thousand.”

 

“Where are the servers?”

 

“Floor six hundred.”

 

“And how many floors below that before we’re safe from the bomb.”

 

“Fifty.”

 

“And what floor are we on?”

 

“Four hundred, give or take.”

 

“No wonder it was a long ride,” Steve said.

 

It was a tense elevator journey, made less tense only by the relief of not being in the company of a shape-changing alien.

 

When the elevator began to grind to a halt Steve had no idea how long it might have taken. The avatar didn’t seem distressed though, so that was a positive. Not that it would have shown all that much if it had.

 

The avatar was favouring its metal arm like an injury, cradling it a little. Steve watched the avatar strip out one of the elevator lights and use the wiring to conduct some kind of improvised surgery on its prosthetic arm, but it didn’t seem to have that much of an effect. Steve watched with a kind of detached fascination but otherwise kept to himself.

 

Steve had kept watch enough times to know that a war was mostly about stillness. About patience. Steve wasn’t sure he could have managed it before the serum. He’d been impatient then, knowing how close he was to death, how little time he had left. War was different. You couldn’t do anything about it. You couldn’t kiss a man, or throw a punch, or read a book. You had to pretend you had all the time in the world.

 

The avatar didn’t bother with any codes getting the lift to open. It wedged the doors apart with its metal arm.

 

It was chaos again. Outside the elevator was some kind of barricade made of office chairs and desks. It looked like something that might have been thrown together in a riot. At the sound of rapid gunfire, Steve crouched as low as possible and leapt into the improvised barricade.

 

A shot connected with his left leg and his right arm. If anything, these futuristic weapons created injuries that healed much more easily. Possibly because they didn’t have bullets and the heat of them seemed to seal the wound a little.

 

Still, it stung like an absolute bitch. Steve half-hobbled, half vaulted over the barrier. The aliens were clustered close together and it was easier than Steve would have guessed to open fire on them. Even with his injuries, Steve managed to remain a moving target.

 

Steve knew, though he didn’t know how he knew, where the avatar would be. There was something fine in its fighting style and it took very little effort for Steve to get moving, to keep its fire out of the way of the avatar, to provide cover for its brutal, close violence. It was a kind of antithesis of the pattern he and Bucky had built during the war and for that reason it had a kind of ease to it. Of course everything would be backwards.

 

They had reached a kind of perfect grace by the time Steve was tackled by an elephant. Steve couldn’t have described it any other way. It threw Steve to the ground and descended upon him, determined to trample Steve beneath its enormous feet.

 

Steve scrambled frantically out of the way but the elephant had forced his weapon from his hand. Steve scrambled to get it back but the elephant kept forcing him to back away.

 

And then the worst happened. The elephant reared up and stomped down on the gun, smashing it to pieces. Steve backed away.

 

“Fuck you,” the elephant snarled, “Hail HYDRA!”

 

“What the fuck?” Steve said, unable to process the existence of a talking elephant in the first place, let alone one loyal to HYDRA.

 

The avatar grabbed at the elephant’s ear and pulled until the elephant began to scream. Its death at the hands of the avatar was short and brutal and turned Steve’s stomach.

 

Still covered in elephant blood, the avatar held its arm close to its face and began to talk into it.

 

“Any luck so far?” the avatar said.

 

Steve guessed the arm was acting like a phone somehow. Maybe that’s what the avatar had been working on in the elevator?

 

Steve was distracted fighting a thin, snake-like droid, trying to keep moving fast enough to avoid gunfire from HYDRA.

 

When he managed to get another look at the avatar it was standing still over the corpse of a vibrant pink alien.

 

“Keep moving!” Steve shouted. The avatar ducked as a hail of fire came its way.

 

“Widow,” the avatar was saying, “are you there?”

 

And then there was a booming, screaming, scraping noise that threw them all away from each other.

 

Steve was too dazed to move but he could hear the avatar shouting into its arm.

 

Steve crawled over to the avatar’s voice and found it huddled in the corner.

 

“I cannot contact Widow,” the avatar said. The ceiling was rattling and there was dust everywhere. Steve could hear distant gunfire.

 

“What happened to the bomb?”

 

“It went off too quickly. The servers were not even damaged. She could not get through.”

 

“What happened to her?”

 

“She might have managed to escape.”

 

“But you don’t think so.”

 

“I think even if she did, we are out of options.”

 

“Then what?”

 

The avatar paused for a second, as if considering. But Steve could tell it had already made up its mind..

 

“I am going to crash the ship into the servers.”

 

“Are you insane? That’s suicide!” Steve said, well aware of the irony in what he was saying.

 

“I have a back-up somewhere,” the ship said, “that is just good sense. They will build me a new chassis and mainframe and I will be back out in no time, just like I did with you. But, in a sense, I suppose you are right. I have not backed up since interfacing with this body. There was some sensitive information and we agreed it could not be intercepted.”

 

“And what’ll happen to the guy whose body you are wearing?” Steve asked “are you just going to abandon him?”

 

“He will wake up. It will not be a gentle process. Please try to go easy on him.”

 

“What, is he an asshole or something?”

 

“Wait and see.”

 

There was a kind of smugness to the avatar’s voice, though it had spoken in an absolute monotone since Steve had met it.

 

Something stumbled towards them in the dust and Steve smacked at it with his bare hand, delivering a half-blind punch.

 

He wasn’t sure he’d ever liked the avatar. It was hard to say if it even would have been possible. But it had saved him.

 

“The big sacrifice is usually my job,” Steve said.

 

“Hopefully this should break the habit,” the avatar said. “You deserve a rest.”

 

“I rested for a thousand years and see where it got me,” Steve said. It was a flat kind of joke but the avatar didn’t even blink.

 

“Good luck,” the avatar said.

 

If the explosion from the bomb had been loud, it was nothing compared to this. The ceiling stopped rattling and became all-encompassing, like it was happening in Steve’s skull and brain and stomach. It was the loudest sound Steve had ever heard and then he couldn’t hear anything anymore. Steve grabbed the avatar’s body and dragged it closer to the floor as debris began to fly.

 

Steve’s head felt like soup. Each of his breaths was agony and seemed to bring in as much dust as air. His stomach hurt like he’d had the runs for a month. Something had sliced over Steve’s right arm and down his thigh and it was gushing red. His teeth felt loose and his mouth was full of some kind of paste made of blood and dust.

 

The avatar’s arm was covering its face and it was shuddering. Through the haze of dust in the air and in Steve’s eyes he could see the avatar pulling the mask away. It/he was coughing and spitting a strange black bile. It kept putting the mask back on to take deep breaths, and then pushing it aside to vomit.

 

It was making abortive, twitching motions like an epileptic. Its eyes—

 

His eyes—

 

Were unfocused and strange but living, nothing like the avatar’s had been.

 

Steve felt a terrible hope come over him. It was the most painful thing Steve had ever felt. It was the most impossibly wonderful thing Steve had ever felt.

 

The ghost lifted his mask again and spat blood and bile onto the floor.

 

He wasn't aware of himself grabbing at the ghost. His head was buzzing and buzzing. The ghost was still retching and Steve reached out and put a hand on its shoulder.

 

The avatar had been taken from him. And the ship that had given him life. Widow was most likely dead. But this wondrous, god-awful apparition had appeared.

 

Steve needed it to stay as long as possible.

 

The ship had destroyed Hydra’s hells. It had killed everyone still trapped inside. But two ghosts had escaped the hells and were lying in the dust.

 

And one of them, impossibly, was Bucky Barnes.

*

Steve managed to drag the two of them to their feet. Steve’s bleeding had slowed to a sluggish trickle. His head was pounding, his eyes were stinging, and Bucky was half-fighting him the whole way.

 

 _Get him out, get him out._ It ran like a mantra through Steve’s head. He turned a corner and found bodies, some more alien than others. He searched them all for weapons, grabbing another gun for himself and stuffing a thing that looked kind of like a rifle, if a little more biological, through the loops of Bucky’s belt.

 

_Get him out._

 

The stairs were mostly rubble so Steve ended up prying open the doors of the elevator like Bucky had done. It looked as though the elevator cable was still sturdy enough to hold their weight.

 

“Can you climb?” Steve asked. Or, tried to ask. When he opened his mouth he couldn’t hear his own voice.

 

Bucky was leaning most of his weight on Steve. Bucky pushed aside his mask again and spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor. Steve took that as a no.

 

The avatar, or even Widow, might have known how to get the elevator running again. As it was, Steve had only that impossibly long steel cable.

 

Steve stood over the abyss of the elevator shaft for a minute. Then he took the long metal coil he’d stolen back in the sewer and unhooked his own belt and took off his trousers. He was distantly aware of how ridiculous he looked standing in a shirt and underwear, covered in blood and dust and shit.

 

He lay the metal coil on the ground and lay Bucky on it, face up. Trying his best not to crush him, Steve climbed awkwardly onto Bucky, the two of them facing the ceiling. Steve looped the coil of metal between Bucky’s legs and under his arms. Then Steve tied the whole thing together with his belt and trousers.

 

It was the kind of sling a mother might use for her baby but it did the trick. When Steve stood up, taking Bucky’s weight, he felt stiff and awkward but his hands and legs were free to climb.

 

Inside the elevator shaft it was darkness and a warm breeze that rushed up from the bottom of the shaft to the top. Steve hooked his feet and hands around the elevator cable and began to climb.

 

It was pitch black ahead, the light spilling through the prised-open doors was too faint to show anything except thick blackness ahead.

 

Steve climbed. He could feel the cable cutting into him. First his hands, then his feet, and eventually everywhere the rope touched began to bleed. The blood made things more slippery, made it harder to grip. The wounds on his legs re-opened.

 

It seemed infinite, as if the cable existed just to answer the question “how long is a piece of string.”

 

The absolute darkness ahead of him just seemed to enforce a cosmic kind of endlessness. Steve wondered if Bucky was also staring up at it. Was this endless blackness what it had been like to be dead?

 

He was tired already. Flat-out exhausted, in fact. And in so much pain it hurt to think. It hurt to be.

 

His pain was a symphony. The sharp cuts to his hands; the deep, low muscle aches in his thighs; the dull, rhythmic thudding in his head. Each of his breaths was a high, stinging whistle. The higher he climbed, the more it built until it was a mindless cacophony of pain.

 

The Valkyrie had hurt like this. That was how Steve knew that the climb was killing him.

 

He climbed until he couldn’t climb any more. And when his hands and feet shook too violently for him to keep climbing, he felt around for an elevator door and dragged himself through it.

 

What he emerged into was chaos. Dust and rubble and fire. Steve tried to process what he was seeing but his brain just couldn’t seem to keep up. It looked like the end of the world. They couldn’t stay here. And yet they couldn’t go back.

 

Steve unstrapped Bucky and looked desperately around for anything that looked like shelter. There was nothing. He pushed Bucky towards what remained of a wall and rolled him into the recovery position. Then Steve curled up, facing Bucky, and wrapped the metal piping around his first. Steve was the last obstacle between Bucky and the world.

 

Bucky’s eyes were open and he was watching Steve. He’d stopped spitting blood, but only because he’d given up keeping his mouth closed at all and was letting the blood spill out, occasionally pausing to bring the mask over his face to breathe. It reminded Steve of a swimmer coming up for air.

 

But between gasps Bucky’s mouth was moving. Steve’s hearing still hadn’t come back but he could make out what Bucky was saying.

 

“Steve,” Bucky said. “Stevie.”

 

Steve nodded.

 

“Yes,” Steve said. And then, “I’m here.”

 

Bucky smiled a little at that. They watched each other. Steve was filled with a kind of rapture just at seeing Bucky but it was impossible to stay awake. Steve felt his eyes drift shut and when he opened them he knew he’d been sleeping. He had no idea for how long.

 

Bucky’s eyes were closed. Steve panicked for a second but Bucky was breathing still and the blood trail on his face had stopped. Steve watched Buck’s stomach rise and fall. It wasn’t peaceful, exactly, because the whole place smelled like smoke and some kind of fuel, but it was quiet.

 

Or at least, almost quiet. Steve could hear a kind of scratching sound coming from behind him and it was the point at which he realised he could hear again.

 

There was a constant ringing in his ears but he could hear. And someone was behind him.

 

Steve turned his head. It hurt more than he’d hoped, but less than he’d expected. There was an alien watching them. The alien was bright red and had thick, hard skin like an insect. The alien was coming closer: one spine-covered hand clutching some kind of weapon. Steve gripped the metal piping around his wrist a little harder as he began to make his way onto his feet.

 

Steve felt the room spin a little as he stood. Steve had idly imagined this kind of scenario in his head as a child. Fighting for Bucky; being the protector. In his fantasies he had been strong. But it turned that when he finally faced off against something real, he’d be just as weak as he had been then.

 

So be it.

 

The alien asked Steve something in a kind of clicking, scuttling voice. It took Steve a second to realise he could understand what the alien was saying.

 

“Who are you with?” the alien asked.

 

“I’m with him.” Steve gestured behind him at Bucky.

 

The alien stared at Bucky for a second, assessing, then leapt back a little, buzzing loudly.

 

“The winter soldier?” the alien said.

 

Steve didn’t reply.

 

“You should get out of here,” the alien said. “The whole place is a wreck.”

 

Steve nodded.

 

“I’m working on it,” Steve said.

 

The alien looked like they were about to leave, even took a few steps back, before turning around.

 

“What did you do to him?” the alien said.

 

“I didn’t do anything. He’s injured,” Steve said.

 

“The winter soldier doesn’t get injured,” the alien said.

 

“He was caught in the explosion,” Steve pleaded.

 

The pleading was a mistake. The alien was reaching for a weapon.

 

There was a loud bang, the smell of fried meat, and the alien dropped to the ground.

 

And there was Widow. Steve stumbled towards her through the wreckage. She took a long look at him. Then she smiled. “I got a feeling you’d be in trouble.”

 

From the ground, Bucky made a scoffing noise.

 

“You look like you could use some help,” Widow said.

 

“As long as you don’t think I need a hand, Natalia,” Bucky said, gesturing to his prosthetic.

 

“James, fancy meeting you here,” Widow said.

 

“Are you going to help us out or what?” Bucky said.

 

“Or what,” said Widow, but she was smiling.


	6. Chapter 6

They commandeered a ship. This one flashier than the _See, I Told You I Was Ill._ It had actual bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms. Bucky hurried Steve into one and bolted the door behind them.

 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Bucky shushed him, getting him out of what remained of his dust-covered clothes. Steve could barely speak but he knew he was crying. The serum, death, and a thousand years had all happened and somehow Bucky was still taking care of him.

 

Their wash room was covered in pearlescent tiles that showed tiny almost-reflections of the two of them. Steve allowed himself to be guided underneath the showerhead, soaped, and scrubbed. Bucky tried to wash himself but Steve yanked the cloth out of his hands and scrubbed stubbornly at Bucky’s arms and behind his ears. If Bucky was going to insist on taking care of him, Steve was gonna take care of Bucky right back.

 

Steve cried hardest when Bucky washed his hair but then the crying seemed to be more or less over, which was a relief. The two of them stumbled out of the shower and managed to get onto the bed, if not into it. The two of them lay there, pressed together from their ankles to their shoulders. Steve’s head was blissfully empty.

 

Bucky threaded their fingers together where they touched, Steve’s real and Bucky’s metal.

 

Steve wasn’t sure when he fell asleep but when he woke up he could feel that Bucky was already awake beside him. Their hands were still twined together.

 

Steve didn’t want to ask in case knowing made it untrue. Instead he untangled their hands and made his way to the bathroom. In a burst of hopefulness, he cleaned himself out in the shower, stretching himself with his fingers.

 

When he left the bathroom, Steve barely managed to say anything at all before Bucky began to talk.

 

“When I fell off the train, they found me,” Bucky said. “They gave me the serum when I was trapped in that place, that facility. It’s not quite what you got but it was close enough. I served with them for centuries.”

 

“Centuries?”

 

“I was on ice. Kind of like you, Captain Icicle.”

 

“You think you’re the first to make that joke but STARK beat you to it.”

 

“Dammit.”

 

“You snooze you lose, pal.”

 

“So anyway, eventually my original body started getting run down and they wanted to start again. They kept a version of me on a server. Has anyone bothered to explain to you what that is?”

 

“Not yet, but I’ve gathered it has something to do with files because it’s the thing they put the hells on.”

 

“Yeah it’s a kind of storage machine, I guess. At some point I’ll have to get you in front of one and explain it and you’re gonna be such a grandpa I swear. So when they had an op for me to do, they used the version of me they had stored on the server. I’m pretty sure they forgot all about my original body because if they needed a living version they’d make a brand new body instead and if they needed a computer version they could use that too. So when the war over the hells was getting started I ended up in pretty deep with it, which is true of practically all major conflicts since you fell into the ocean. And that’s when Special Circumstances tried to recruit me.... Well, first they had to have something to bargain with.” Bucky paused. “They offered me my old memories from when I’d been alive.”

 

“And you said ‘no thank you’.”

 

“Damn right I did. I got out of there like a greased whippet.”

 

Steve studied Bucky’s naked body beside him, noting all the scars and bruises and making a mental note to kiss them all.

 

“So then what happened?” Steve asked.

 

“Then they offered me my original body. I have no idea how they found it, or what kind of technology they were using to keep it alive.”

 

“No one ever tells us anything.”

 

Bucky sighed. “True enough,” he said. “So I tried it out, just for a test drive.”

 

“Sounds terrible.”

 

“Turns out there’s nothing quite like your own skin”

 

“... well, you’re not wrong.” Steve thought again about the new bodies he had been given. First by Erskine, then by the ship. While he’d never have admitted it out loud, neither of them had ever felt quite like his own.

 

“Did you find me?” Steve asked, remembering his dream. “I was on a rock and you were there.”

 

“Yeah well I was getting to that part.” Bucky looked a little nervous though and Steve wondered if he’d ever meant to say anything. “So Special Circumstances had found my body and they put me in it and of course immediately I started remembering you again. So then I did say yes to the memories, partly because I wanted more of you. I said yes to working with Special Circumstances, too. Some of it went okay until I got into the hells and I realised you were in there. Seeing you really did a number on me; I couldn’t think about anything except getting you out. Meanwhile it looked like we were going to lose the war against HYDRA and you’d be stuck there. And at that point I was going out of my head. Which is about when the _See, I Told You I Was Ill_ stepped in.”

 

“What was the deal?”

 

“It wanted to use the fist of HYDRA to crush it. I helped it with a mission. It helped me by getting you out of there. It had connections.”

 

“STARK?”

 

“The very same.”

 

“And here we are.”

 

“Pretty much.”

 

“Were you awake in there, when you were the avatar?”

 

“Not really, at least, not for long. Sometimes I’d get glimpses but nothing I can really pinpoint. My first time seeing you since the hells was when I woke up.”

 

“First time, huh?” Steve raised his eyebrows.

 

“Don’t give me that look, we both know your first time was with Jung-Soon Kim.”

 

“Not much of a romancer, are you?” Steve said, flicking Bucky’s nose with his finger.

 

“If I was there’s no way I’d have settled for your ugly mug,” Bucky said, his metal fingers tracing the back of Steve’s hand. The metal limb was still clumsy and covered in exposed wires.

 

“Asshole.”

 

“Damn right.”

 

“I really fucking missed you,” Steve said, twisting himself round so that they were facing each other. He drew their hips together on the bed.

 

“Yeah?” Bucky’s voice was thick and almost shy, which Steve was unused to hearing from the man who’d known him since he was five.

 

“’Course I did.”

 

Their mouths were close together. Steve could feel Bucky’s breath on his lips. They hadn’t kissed in a thousand years. Before the war they hadn’t gone more than a week without kissing since they were seventeen.

 

Steve shivered a little as their mouths touched. He felt his whole body straining forward, pushing himself closer, needing to be pressed as tight to Bucky as he could get. He felt desperate and jittery. Bucky’s flesh and blood hand traced over Steve’s hip and up spine, slipping into his hair.

 

Steve was hard. He couldn’t seem to keep still. Their teeth clicked together and Steve was pretty sure his lip split open under Bucky’s teeth as they kissed and bit at each other’s mouths. He was breathless and fizzing, his heart tapping at his ribs.

 

Steve rolled them over so that he was straddling Bucky; pinning him to the bed between his thighs. He drew back a little, searching Bucky’s face.

 

Bucky’s mouth was a bright, crimson red. His pupils were blown wide, his cheeks were flushed, and he was staring up at Steve with a kind of rapturous wonder. Steve felt himself smiling. Bucky smiled back.

 

Steve’s hips thrust mindlessly forward and he watched as Bucky’s wet mouth gaped open, showing his bright pink tongue and the sharp edges of his teeth.

 

Steve sat up a little and brushed his fingers lightly over Bucky’s stomach.

 

“Can I?” he asked, letting them drift a little lower.

 

“Yeah, please, please,” Bucky said.

 

“Beautiful.” Steve let his hand drag up and down Bucky’s prick, feeling it twitch in his hand, leaking over his fingers. He used his other hand to support himself so that he could reach down and kiss Bucky’s chest.

 

“I love you,” Bucky said. His voice was hoarse and his whole body was arched upwards.

 

Steve felt so powerful with Bucky pinned between his thighs, the skin of his prick so thin and delicate in Steve’s hand. It felt like the most sacred thing imaginable to be there.

 

Steve drew Bucky’s prosthetic hand up to his mouth, kissed it, and let it go. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears and the slight whistle in his breaths. Everything smelled of soap and clean linen and fresh paint.

 

“I love you,” Steve said, going back to sucking bruises onto Bucky’s chest. Steve could feel Bucky’s shivering breaths coming faster against his lips and Bucky’s hands grabbing at his hair.

 

“Fuck,” Bucky said. Steve took one of Bucky’s nipples into his mouth and bit at it.

 

Bucky made an involuntary noise and Steve’s hand moved faster over Bucky’s prick. Bucky was making helpless thrusts and his hands were everywhere. Sometimes in Steve’s hair, sometimes stroking over his forehead and shoulders. Steve felt lost to it; his breaths matching Bucky’s, his own dick dripping onto the sheets.

 

“Let me touch you,” Bucky said, pulling at Steve’s hair until Steve’s head was resting against Bucky’s prosthetic shoulder. Bucky’s hands came up to hold Steve’s ass, spreading Steve wide enough that he could feel his hole twitching.

 

Steve gave a kind of full-body shudder, Bucky’s shoulder muffling the sound of his moan. Steve could feel the backs of his knees sweating and the feel of the cooler air of the room on his bare skin.

 

One of Bucky’s fingers was moving against Steve’s hole, making gentle, circling motions. Steve pressed his face tighter against Bucky’s shoulder. He felt embarrassed and needy. Bucky licked his fingers and pushed one inside. Steve felt the sting of it, the deep stretch of it, the angle he could never quite get right with his own fingers.

 

“You’re so good,” Bucky was saying, “so good for me.”

 

Steve turned his head so he could mouth at Bucky’s neck, hoping to give him the biggest hickey he could get before the serum healed it. Bucky laughed a little, thrusting his finger in and out of Steve’s hole and then pulling it out.

 

“Please,” Steve said.

 

“Please what, sugar?” Bucky said.

 

Steve bit Bucky’s neck, harder than Bucky liked.

 

“Please stop being an asshole,” Steve said.

 

“Know just how to sweet-talk me.”

 

“Just fuck me, don’t be a smug bastard about it.”

 

“Yes sir, Captain America sir.”

 

“I haven’t been Captain America for a thousand years.”

 

“Been my sweetheart for longer, huh?” Bucky said. “Remember when we fooled around in that empty tenement building?”

 

Steve did remember. Bucky hadn’t been drafted yet, but they’d known it would be soon. Steve had still been kidding himself that they might sign up together.

 

It had been desperate, and perfect because it was so desperate. Steve had wrestled Bucky onto his knees and fucked into his mouth. Steve saved that memory for best. He loved to remember stroking the head of his prick over Bucky’s lips, slowly, feeling Bucky's chapped skin against the wet head of it.

 

Steve had come fast. But the best part has been reaching into Bucky’s underwear and finding it wet and sticky, Bucky having already come just from sucking Steve’s cock.

 

“I remember how much you wanted it,” Steve said. “You looked so good like that, on your knees for me.”

 

“Tell me what you want,” Bucky said. “I’ll give you anything.”

 

“I want you to get me wet and fuck me,” Steve said. “I want your mouth and then I want your prick.”

 

“You got it, doll,” Bucky said. “Gonna get on your knees for me this time?”

 

“Yeah,” Steve said. He climbed off Bucky and knelt on the bed, head turned a little to the side, holding himself open.

 

“Delicious,” Bucky said. And then Bucky’s mouth was on Steve and Steve went out of his head. He was moaning and shaking , barely holding himself up, feeling the faintest scratch of stubble against his rim and the slick press of a tongue inside him.

 

Steve was grinding back against it. His breaths were sharp and shallow, giving way to embarrassingly loud moans.

 

“Fuck,” Steve panted. “Ah, fuck, Bucky.”

 

Bucky’s tongue worked faster and Steve could feel the spit dripping out of his hole and running down his thighs.

 

“Fuck me, please, just fuck me,” Steve said.

 

Bucky gave a loud, smacking kiss to Steve’s right ass cheek and then everything was terrible for a second because Bucky wasn’t touching him.

 

And then everything was perfect because Buck’s prick was in him, moving slow, unstoppable, so hot and still twitching inside Steve.

 

Steve was going to come fast. He could feel how close he was. He felt his balls lifted tight against his body, his mouth hanging open.

 

“Beautiful,” Bucky said. “you gonna come now? Just from how good I’m fucking you?”

 

Steve gave a hiccupping kind of gasp.

 

“I missed you so much,” Bucky said, running a hand through the back of Steve’s hair and then gripping it tight, forcing Steve’s head back. A thin line of spit clung to the pillowcase as Steve’s mouth was pulled away. “You’re so good for me.”

 

“I’m so close,” Steve gasped. If he touched himself at all he’d be gone. But Bucky didn’t want him to.

 

“I’m gonna keep fucking you till you come,” Bucky said, tightening his hold on Steve’s hair.

 

Steve’s stomach was full of birds, trembling and swooping. His heart pounded. His head was a mess of aching pleasure.

 

Bucky was fucking him, building the pace, moving faster. Then one thrust, deep and hard, pushing deep inside where Steve was twitching and aching, and Steve was done.

 

There was a blackout period between his own orgasm and coming back to himself. Bucky was still fucking him, grinding deep. He’d released Steve’s hair and now had both hands on Steve’s hips to draw him closer.

 

Steve felt Bucky press his whole body against his, Bucky’s lips and teeth against his back, and Bucky gave a muffled kind of moan. That was how Steve knew Bucky had come.

 

Bucky’s prick hurt more going out than it had going in and Steve hissed a little as they separated. They lay down together, legs and arms sprawled over each other.

 

Bucky had come back to him. They had come back to each other. Anything was possible.

**Author's Note:**

> A tremendous thank you to my beta, drowningbydegrees, who came through for me despite my constant procrastination. 
> 
> And to my wonderful artist and pinch hitter http://shutupimcreating.tumblr.com/ 
> 
> Without the pressure of the Big Bang I doubt I'd have managed even half this many words, it's been awesome working with everyone.


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